


Hostile or Destructive Action

by glorious_spoon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, HYDRA Trash Party, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 21:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21398842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: The tapes of Captain America being abused in Hydra custody hit the internet. In the aftermath, Steve has to make a choice.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	Hostile or Destructive Action

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Interests of National Security](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907569) by [shinelikethunder (tenlittlebullets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenlittlebullets/pseuds/shinelikethunder). 

> This is a followup to shinelikethunder's amazing HTP/MCU Media fic, [The Interests of National Security](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907569) and also references [Blood From a Stone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2322656/chapters/5114594). 
> 
> In short: while Steve was in Hydra custody, he was raped and tortured by his Strike Team and also the Winter Soldier. Some time later, pictures of the abuse leak to the media. That's all you really need to know to read this, but you should _really_ read both of those fics anyway, because they're amazing.
> 
> This is like... marginally Civil War compliant if you assume that Steve _et al_ didn't go on the run afterward.

He spends the four-hour flight into Dulles breathing canned air and trying to feel like he’s not about to shake apart into pieces. It seems like every single damned person on the flight was within earshot of that checkpoint, and the few who weren’t have evidently been caught up, God bless cell phone cameras and the 24-hour news cycle. He hasn’t bothered to turn his phone back on; it’s too easy to guess the contents of his inbox, and he doesn’t feel prepared to face that just now.

No one manages to get up the guts to say anything, but even without looking up from his book he can see three people with their cell phones out, and they’re not even trying to be discreet about filming him. He flexes his fingers, entertains a brief fantasy of snatching the pink kitten-themed phone away from the woman across the aisle and crushing it into dust—but pitching a fit mid-flight won’t improve the situation any, and it also won’t actually make him feel any better.

He’s read the first two pages of _Foundation_ six times in a row before he accepts that even intergalactic space wars aren’t going to be enough of a distraction, but he doesn’t close the book, just grips it in his lap until his fingernails have left deep divots in the paper.

* * *

He didn’t call to let anyone know that he was on his way back, but Natasha meets him at baggage claim anyway. One moment he’s alone, waiting for his battered suitcase to make its way over so he can get the hell _out_ of there already; the next, there’s a whiff of strong coffee and expensive perfume, and she says, “You should consider answering your phone once in a while.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Steve snaps, yanking his bag off the carousel and slinging it over his shoulder. The weight of the shield settles heavily against his back, comforting. There’s a trio of middle-aged tourists on the other side of the carousel blatantly staring at him. He gives them a tight smile and looks away.

Natasha is silent for a long moment, then says, “I’m sorry, Steve.”

It’s quiet and sincere, and Steve finally brings himself to glance down at her. She looks tired and drawn, and it occurs to him that this can’t have been easy on her, either. On any of them.

He sighs. “Sorry. How bad is it?”

He can guess, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to look at any of the newsstands he passed on the way through.

“Bad enough. Stark Industries is running interference.”

“Remind me to send Tony a fruit basket,” Steve says dryly. “Can we get out of here now? I’d rather not have this conversation in the middle of an airport.”

Because she’s Natasha, and she’s kinder than anyone ever expects her to be, she nods. “Yeah. Come on, Sam has a car outside.”

* * *

The car is clearly on loan—or possibly stolen—from SHIELD, a sleek black SUV that could probably drive through a tank. Steve slings his bags in the trunk and slides into the backseat. In the driver’s seat, Sam twists to look back at him, lifts his sunglasses, and says, “Hey. Welcome back.”

“Hell of a welcome,” Steve says. “When were you planning on letting me know?”

Sam sighs. “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a week, Steve.”

“I’m sorry.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to rein in his temper. Biting Sam’s head off isn’t going to help anything. “I’ve had a rough day.”

“Man, you’ve got a real gift for understatement.”

The other door opens, and Natasha slides in. “We’re clear,” she says to Sam, then adds, with a glance back at Steve, “Reporters.”

“Assholes,” Sam interjects, pulling away from the curb.

Natasha puts her head back against the seat cushions and closes her eyes. “I took care of them.”

Steve knows his line here: _You can’t just assassinate everybody at the Washington Post_, and she’ll smirk a little and say, _Who said everybody?_, but when he opens his mouth, what comes out instead is, “Are they real? The pictures?”

There’s a thick, stifling silence, and then Sam clears his throat. “We don’t know,” he says. “Not for sure.”

Steve looks at Natasha, who doesn’t look back. After a long moment, she says, “Probably, yes. But the only person who’d know for sure is—”

“Me,” Steve finishes, bitterly. “Maybe Bucky, if he remembered any of it.”

He doesn’t have to see Sam’s face to hear the wince in his voice. “Steve—”

“Never mind. God.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Sorry.”

For the first time since he left Wakanda he’s glad—horribly, guiltily glad—that Bucky is still in cryostasis while the doctors there sift the rest of the hidden triggers out of his brain. Bucky doesn’t remember. He would have said something if he did. Bucky—and he _is_ Bucky again now in all the ways that matter, even if he and Steve will never be what they used to be to each other—he would have found time to say something. To offer an apology, as little as Steve needs or wants one.

In the grand scheme of everything Hydra forced Bucky to do, that was nothing. But Steve’s glad, all the same, that he isn’t going to be finding out from a fucking media scandal before Steve figures out a way to break it to him.

“He’s not in any of the pictures, anyway,” Natasha says calmly from the front seat. She leans forward and comes back up with a file folder, which she hands back to him. “Here.”

“You really think that’s a good idea?” Sam asks, but Steve takes the folder. There’s not gonna be anything in there that he doesn’t revisit in full Technicolor detail in his nightmares on a regular basis. All else being equal, he’d rather know what he’s up against.

“They didn’t bring out the cameras until after Pierce left.” Small mercies. The smallest. He’s glad of it all the same. “Guess it’s hard to claim plausible deniability if you’re caught on film raping prisoners.”

Neither Sam nor Natasha flinches, and Steve loves them for it. He flips the folder open as the car accelerates onto the freeway. The top page is a memo on CIA letterhead, detailing the source and particulars of the leak: as expected, a Hydra agent’s phone that had never uploaded to the servers, all the nasty little secrets in its video files stumbled across by some analyst who looked at some of the worst moments of Steve’s life and saw only dollar signs.

The next page is briefing notes. Then newspaper articles, or a sample of them: he could probably find a more up-to-date selection if he wanted to check the news on his phone, which he damn well does not. _Capgate: what we know so far,_ blares a printout from NPR. The breathless speculation beneath is mostly dressed up in sober prose, but he can read between the lines just fine.

Underneath that, the pictures. Black and white, at least, although he knows the video must have been released in full color. On these printouts, the blood and semen smeared on his skin, down his thighs, pooling on the floor beneath him—it all looks gray and colorless. Like pictures from the war. Less shocking, somehow, than the reality of it.

He flips the folder shut and sets it on the seat beside him. “They’re real.”

Sam lets out a slow breath, and Natasha nods. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees as the city whips by outside the window. All crumbling concrete buildings splashed with graffiti, railway tracks stretched overhead.

“You don’t actually have to do anything,” Sam says. His tone is caught between gentleness and resignation, as is the smile he tosses over his shoulder at Steve. He knows that _doing nothing_ isn’t really in Steve’s repertoire, never has been. Steve could kiss him right now. Half wishes he’d gotten up the courage to try it back before Insight, before everything came crashing down, both literally and figuratively. That particular ship has long since sailed now, but even so, Sam is the kind of friend he’s never deserved. Him and Natasha both. “You could just tell them to shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

“The entire free press of the US of A?” Steve says, and drops back in his seat. “Come on. They’ve probably staked out my place by now.”

“They have,” Natasha says. “That’s why we’re not going to your place. I have a safehouse outside the city. Should be secure. We can regroup and—”

“No,” Steve says. “I’m not hiding.”

Sam huffs out a dry laugh and then says, to Natasha, “Told you.”

“Worth a try.” She leans back to look at Steve. “You sure about this?”

Steve takes a breath, and it’s not the cell he’s thinking of now, it’s not Bucky’s hands holding him down or Pierce unzipping his fly or the team of guys he led for two years kicking him, spitting on him, slicing him open and jeering while they took their turns with him—

Instead, it’s the utterly prosaic scene of the airport this morning. The little indignities of it that everyone there just seemed to expect. Turn out your pockets. Stand on a mat and let a man in uniform put his hands all over you, and if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

Liberty for security. To hell with that.

He closes his eyes. The peace he managed to find out in the mountains seems very far away, just now. “I’m sure. If the press wants a statement, I'll give them one.”


End file.
